Making sure victims don’t survive

Francis Wilkinson

Bloomberg.com

Former Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan once proposed a huge tax on the most damaging kinds of ammunition, explaining: “Guns don’t kill people, bullets do.” Recent mass shootings have proved that the late senator “was onto something,” said Francis Wilkinson. In his “sick” manifesto, the El Paso shooter lovingly explains his choices of an AK-47–style semi-automatic weapon and the “8m3 bullet,” which has a cult following because it expands and fragments when it hits human flesh—causing catastrophic wounds. In publications such as the NRA’s official journal, Shooting Illustrated, “bullet talk is as revealing a window on American gun culture as gun talk.” In one ammo review, the writer gives his “thumbs up” to Hornady-brand bullets’ ability to penetrate thick clothing and expand inside the body, causing “deep wound cavities.” When this kind of ammo is paired with semi-automatic rifles, which fire bullets at triple the velocity of most handguns, the effects are “especially gruesome and lethal.” Surgeons who’ve treated victims of assault-rifle mass shootings say organs are so badly shredded that there is “nothing left to repair.” Why are we selling “hyperlethal” guns and bullets designed and marketed to make sure shooting victims can’t possibly survive?